These Technicolor Covid-19 PSAs Prove Seriousness Can Mean Fun

Imagine an alternate reality where guidelines on how to protect yourself from the coronavirus are written in groovy technicolor. Where the situation is still serious, but a little less burdensome, because the reminders not to touch your face are actually funny. Such is the world of Mathery, named after Brooklyn-based duo Erika Zorzi and Matteo Sangalli. Partners in work and life, the two have isolated themselves in their New York apartment since the pandemic began to destroy their native Italy. To keep busy during quarantine, they've created new images that turn everyday items like toilet paper and cleaning supplies into wry commentaries on the social etiquette necessitated by Covid-19. They're brilliant, informative, and an appealing antidote to life spent sheltered in place.

Ali Cherkis: Where are you from in Italy? How long have you lived in New York?

Mathery: We are from Milan and Brescia in northern Italy. For 10 years we worked and lived together in different places in Australia, China and South Korea. This experience gave us the opportunity to work and experiment with various disciplines such as product design, exhibition and photography. We've been in New York for four years, and now we work primarily as design and photography directors.

When did you start collaborating?

We met at the University of Milan when we were studying product design. Things just clicked when we started working on missions together. Our first project together was a blog called 01mathery that we started in 2010 where we posted one idea a day. We did it for 100 days. This project established our way of working together, and we haven't stopped since. We have never worked separately. Two heads are better than one, right?

What inspired you to do this project? What moods and ideas did you want to convey with these images?

We decided to self-isolate the first week of March just when we heard about the outbreak in Italy. We were getting messages from our friends asking about our families back home and we realized that the idea of ​​the virus reaching New York and the rest of America was far from everyone's mind. At that point, we felt we had to spread information and get creative in doing so.

How has working exclusively from home changed your creative process? What are some of the challenges of photographing still lifes at home?

We travel a lot for work. Last year we were only home half the year! But we are also used to working from home for long periods of time and have been doing so for years now.

We often make a big mess, then clean up and start again the next day. It definitely inspires our creativity because staying home is exactly what we should be doing right now and what we want to talk about in pictures. So other than a quick stop at the dollar store next door on day zero, we shot everything using seamless [backdrops] from previous projects and personal items as props.

What are the main lessons you have learned from this experience so far?

Despite the terrible situation we all find ourselves in, we have realized that we are lucky to know how to manage our time at home, almost as if we had been training our whole lives. We've been through long periods without work and are used to working on passion projects in times like this.

What does your home studio setup look like?